Nuclear bombs, artificial intelligence and the madness of reason – in The Maniac, Benjamin Labatut examines the troubling dawn of the digital age
- Written by Charles Barbour, Associate Professor, Philosophy, Western Sydney University
GM Pictures/ShutterstockA little over 100 years ago, the great German sociologist Max Weber warned that the growth of modern science would result in the “disenchantment” of the world.
He meant a world without mystery, without the unknown or the transcendent, and therefore without meaning – a world governed by the grim law of what...

















